Phthor (22 page)

The rock began to vibrate. Abruptly Arlo realized: this was a huge maze-dragon, dwarfing the one he had encountered while carrying Vex. Its network of passages—how far did they extend?

He saw a pattern of threads extending through and around a globe, and realized that the Xest had put this picture in his mind. The Xest’s telepathy was superior to that of the minionette; it could make direct informational perceptions and projections. And the picture told him—that the dragon’s maze encircled the very planet.

What a monster! It had to be killed, for it alone could consume the entire army of minionettes. Being telepathic, it would be able to locate every sentient entity in the caverns— if it were loosed in them. And Chthon had provided Arlo no hint of this before; it was a weapon held in reserve.

Yet why should he be surprised? Chthon could make the unique hvee grow, crossbreed and mutate successfully here in the caverns; the simple increase in size of an already formidable breed of monster was well within the mineral intellect’s power.

Of course the creature would not be able to squeeze through the majority of tunnels—but still, it was too terrible a threat to ignore.

Would his hammer kill it? Could he strike hard enough, in a vital spot? Surely the monster had a brain somewhere, and if that were crushed...

The chipper-prey wavered. The Xest was getting tired. Its telepathy was superior, but could not be maintained long. Arlo, on the other hand, could continue the effort indefinitely.

A new picture came to his mind: an elaborate belt, or girdle, radiating power.

Thor’s belt of strength! The Xest was telling Arlo he had it. Yet he did not. What did this mean?

But as the Xest projected new, fleeting images, Arlo understood. It was the caterpillar venom! Not a poison, but a channelizer, to make newly incorporated segments durable enough so as not to be a liability to the whole. The stuff had affected his system, giving it that special reinforcement intended to make him an indefatigable marcher. But now it made him stronger in other ways, extending his mental endurance. He did, indeed, possess the belt of strength, the last of Thor’s gifts.

Now the rock shook so violently that Arlo had difficulty keeping his feet. He braced himself on the scant ledge formed by the intersection of the feeder-tunnel with the main one, lifted the hammer, and waited. The dragon couldn’t possibly brake in time; it would shoot right by the first pass.

There had to be many prey-animals here to feed such bulk. Yet the entrance was blocked. How did they get through? Probably they didn’t; Chthon had arranged to close off this section only recently, within the past couple of decades, and had trapped a sufficient pyramid of lesser animals to serve. At least until Ragnarok.

Did the monster know that the moment the war between

Death and Life was over, the monster itself would be expendable?

Fool! Arlo fired at it.

Now the dragon hove in sight, far down the endless passage. Its huge eyes glowed, spearing out their light to augment the lichen glow. Like a mighty LOE express, it steamed down upon them, traveling so fast that the air compressed ahead of it, making Arlo’s ears crackle.

LOE express, he thought fleetingly. “ ‘There isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going.’ “ That longdefunct female poet wouldn’t take this train!

Arlo held his position. His gaze seemed to meet the awful stare of the dragon. He drew upon his reserves, physical and mental, knowing that he would have only one chance. He braced so hard it was as though his feet were crushing down through the rock to embed themselves in the heart of the planet. If he could strike it cleanly—

The bait-image vanished. The onrushing monster faltered, no longer able to orient on its prey. The eye-beams switched back and forth, trying to pick up what the mind had lost. In a moment that questing light would bathe Arlo and the Xest, exposing them, dooming them without chance of resistance. Only by passing on course, intent on something else, could the dragon be vulnerable to Arlo’s surprise blow. On guard, it would come teeth-first.

The Xest, frightened, had erased the chipper-picture.

Arlo tumbled back, getting out of sight as the blast of the dragon’s frustrated passage pushed air out of the hole they had made. Furious at his companion’s act of cowardice, Arlo swung his hammer at the Xest with all his force.

The blow scored. The Xest shattered explosively. Its eight legs flew out in all directions; its body puffed apart as if it were no more than an inflated bladder, punctured.

As the dragon disappeared down the tunnel, suction jerked Arlo after it. He reached out instinctively and clutched an outcropping of stone. The air howled through the gap in the wall behind him, carrying the fragments of the Xest like so many dried leaves.

Now there was remorse. “I’m sorry!” Arlo cried into the gale. But of course it was too late.

A piece of Xest banged into his back and dropped down. Arlo swept it up—and lo, it was already forming into a miniature Xest. He held it to his face—and its little telepathic image entered his mind.

It was a picture of thousands of Xests overrunning the caverns, looking for Chthon’s secrets, unstoppable because they were so small, so alien to the cavern entity’s experience. Some even clung to the dragon, hitching a ride right around the planet. But mixed with the image was a burgeoning concern. Debt!

“Don’t worry,” Arlo said to it. “Do your job. Harass Chthon. If there is any life-debt, the responsibility is mine. It shall be so recorded.” He paused, unsatisfied. He had guilt of his own to expiate somehow. “If we win, I will give you a hvee. If it lives, I will know you have forgiven me for my crime against you—against all you thousand Xests. The debt is mine.”

With a projection of gratitude, the little Xest moved on.

Arlo made his way back to the chippers and cart as the wind abated. Torment waited, as directed. “So you have relived mythology again,” she said.

“Oh?” Arlo glanced at her, surprised.

“Did you not know that Thor and the giant Hymir went fishing?” she asked. Then, seeing that he did not, she continued: “Thor put the head of an ox on his hook, and it was the great Midgard serpent itself that took the bait. But as Thor drew it up and met the monster’s gaze, Hymir in terror cut the line, letting the serpent escape. Thor in rage smashed the giant with his hammer, but the damage had been done.”

The Midgard serpent—the creature so big its coils encircled the world under the ocean! Indeed he had relived the myth, though he had not read that particular story. And now the world-snake knew its enemy and would be alert.

In Ragnarok, Arlo knew, Thor had in the end fallen prey to that monster. Had he only been able to kill it in the first encounter...

“So stay away from it!” Torment cried. “I think our diversionary ploy has been successful. Life is going to win!”

“Not by re-enacting Norse myth,” Arlo said.

“We have copied that enough. Now we can diverge and wipe out Chthon.”“

“I hope so,” Arlo said, thinking of Vex. Life might win—but would he survive to hold her again?

They moved out, the chippers eager to leave these depths.

Then Arlo felt a sharp pain in his foot. He reached down— and his glove brought up a salamander.

He had been bitten by the caverns’ most poisonous creature.

“Arlo!” Torment cried. Then she saw the salamander. Her horror was like the breath of new love to his mind. “Oh, no!”

“The wind must have sucked it in,” Arlo said bemused by the knowledge that he was finished.

She grabbed him, drawing her knife. “I’ll have to cut, draw out the venom—“

But it was too late. Arlo fell into her arms, unconscious.

Mythology was not to be re-enacted, after all. Not in this detail.

Chapter VI:
  
Life

Two men sat in the passenger lounge of the FTL ship. They watched the simulated stellar view.

“Shall we celebrate my birthday with wine?” the old man inquired, showing his bottle. “Today I am one hundred and eight years old.”

“By all means, Benjamin—if your health permits.”

“Hell with my health, Morning Haze! What use is life without pleasure?”

“In that case, let’s make it a party,” the minion said. “Let’s bring in my brother and the minionettes and really celebrate!”

“And our Xest pilot too,” Benjamin added. “Actually, it has been just about thirty-four years since we won Ragnarok, and the Xests deserve full credit.”

Morning Haze departed while Benjamin poured out the fine old wine. In a moment the minion returned with the others: the Xest, Misery, Vex, and Arlo.

The Xest wore a fine blue-green glowing hvee, symbol of its decades-long friendship with Arlo.

The two minionettes were like twin sisters in the prime of youth, stunningly beautiful—yet one was sixty Earth-years old, the other perhaps a century more. The men, in contrast, showed their ages. Morning Haze was fifty-eight and Arlo fifty; both evinced the waning of the powers of their youth.

“How grand it is,” Benjamin said, passing out the drinks, “to have my nephew’s three children with me on this occasion! I am only sorry Aton himself could not be here.”

“That is unkind,” the Xest signaled.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Benjamin said. “In my age I forget. You, Morning Haze, would be constrained to kill your father in the minion fashion, were he present, so that your wife/mother Misery would not go to him. And you, Arlo, would also have to kill him, so that your sister Vex would not go to him. And you two minionettes would have to kill each other to possess him. While all the time Aton loves only his legitimate wife Coquina, who will not leave the caverns though the technology now exists to abate her chill. So this separation represents the only solution; the elements of our wider family, like oxygen and fluorine, must not be allowed to combine.” Benjamin sighed. “Forgive me if I seem insensitive; I have never had any great sympathy for the minion code, though I value each and every one of you as though you were my own. So let us be happy together, for the duration of this little family reunion, and—” He paused. “Where is Afar?”

“I am here,” a young man said from the doorway. He was tall and powerful, with a piercing glance and a touch of cruelty about the set of his mouth.

“Ah, you so strongly resemble your grandfather!” Benjamin said. “My nephew Aton—he had that look in his youth.”

“The look of madness,” Morning Haze said without rancor.

“Yes, isn’t my son lovely,” Vex agreed.

Arlo’s lips twitched. “Lovely!” he said with heavy irony.

“I suspect my father has outlived his humor,” Afar said. “Yet that can be remedied.”

Vex smiled at Afar. “So sweet,” she said.

Arlo’s muscles bunched, but he said nothing.

“This is what I don’t like about Minion,” Benjamin said. “Why must it be incestuous, with Oedipus and Electra pursuing each other so determinedly, son killing father down the generations? If only you married outside your line, as you are now free to do, owing to the lifting of the planetary proscription, none of this would be necessary!”

“It is the Minion way,” Misery said. “We would not have it otherwise.”

“Even though you know it was all the result of a private concubine plot, a scheme to reap illicit fortunes by catering to wealthy and unscrupulous potentates?”

“The scheme failed. We endure.”

“Yet your husband killed your only son,” Benjamin reminded her.

“So that I could possess her longer,” Morning Haze said proudly. “The impetuous lad grew overconfident and attacked before his time. I did not initiate the action, for that is not the way. I merely—”

“Merely led him on by feigning early loss of vigor?” Benjamin suggested.

“I was more intelligent than he,” Morning Haze agreed obliquely. I inherit that from my Human ancestry.”

Benjamin sighed. “To disparage such a compliment would be to wrong my brother Aurelius, and the Families of Five carry more honor than that. Yet I could wish that the intellect of Five could have found a more gentle expression.”

“I shall give Misery another son in due course. Perhaps he will inherit more of that Five intellect, and time his action correctly.”

“You see,” Vex said brightly. “Soon my son will kill my husband—or be killed by him. In either case, I will have a good man.”

“Chthon!” Arlo swore. “I wish I’d married a normal woman!” He glanced at Afar, who made an elaborate shrug. Arlo, despite his age, remained an extremely powerful man, not one that even a young minion would lightly provoke to mayhem. “Or at least a more amenable minionette, like Torment. She was normal, at the end.”

“Perhaps she died because you made her normal,” Misery suggested with a smile both pleasant and cruel. “A minionette in that state would be like a hunting dog without fangs.”

“Too bad you did not retain your godly powers after Ragnarok,” Vex said. “You could have defanged me. Then I could have died of beautiful sorrow.”

“Damn your sarcasm!” Arlo cried, his rage making her smile brilliantly. “I thought killing was done when we vanquished the mineral intellect.”

“Not so,” the Xest signaled. “Throughout the galaxy the species of Life are warring. Human fights Lfa over some trumped-up charge of planet rustling; EeoO fights Xest over the price of the Taphid, which happens to originate on an EeoO planet. The resources of whole stellar systems are being wastefully depleted. Once the sentience of Chthon was destroyed, no one seemed to care about mineral values. Even among one’s own kind, the Taphid is often neglected.”

“This is regrettable,” Benjamin said politely.

“It’s a mess, all right,” Arlo said. He emptied his glass, looked around—and intercepted the look Vex and Afar were exchanging. His hand clenched into a fist. He no longer wore the gloves of power or carried the hammer; Thor had died at Ragnarok. Pity Arlo had lived!

“One also regrets it,” the Xest signaled. “How much better it would have been to have made some compromise with the cavern entity. When one and one’s myriad debtbrothers fought in the caverns, we thought we were Good vanquishing Evil. Now it seems we were at least partially mistaken.”

“So it seems,” Arlo agreed. “There was much that was worthwhile in Chthon. The mineral intellect was my friend, before Ragnarok; I cannot claim it was evil.” He turned from the Xest, feeling the remorse of genocide. Chthon had never been alive—yet they had killed it, and that had been a galactic crime.

His eyes lifted—and saw Vex in the arms of Afar.

The wrath that had been building for twenty years was catalyzed. Arlo put his great scarred hands about a small auxiliary computer unit, lifted it, and with mad strength ripped it from its moorings. He hurled it at the couple.

The minionette, warned by her telepathy, drew back. The man was not so quick. The heavy unit smashed into his body.

“Brother!” Morning Haze cried. “What have you done?”

Arlo looked—and saw that the two had not been embracing, just conversing. And that the man had not been his son Afar, but his granduncle Benjamin. How could he have mistaken them? The two men were entirely dissimilar!

Morning Haze kneeled beside the old man. “He is dead. Any shock could have killed him, in his condition—and this was no minor strike. What did you suppose you were doing, Brother, throwing that thing at our patriarch?”

“Brother, I thought it was my son,” Arlo said, chagrined.

“With Misery?” Morning Haze inquired, drawing his knife.

On top of everything else, Arlo had mistaken the minionette! His obsession with the ugly heritage of Minion had made him see what he feared, and precipitated a quarrel he abhorred. “Brother, in my confusion I have wronged you. I proffer apology. My quarrel is not with you or your minionette, but with my own—”

Now Afar crossed the room. “So my father has outlived his time!” Afar said. “By his own admission, it was I he sought to kill. Therefore he has violated the Minion code, and I may kill him without equality of weapons. “His hand moved, and he brought out a blaster.

“This must be abated!” the Xest signaled desperately, its multiple legs moving in a confusing pattern as it ran between them. “A misunderstanding—”

Afar fired. His blast was directed at Arlo, but the Xest was now in the line of fire. The flame bathed it, destroying it utterly, without trace of debt. What was not vaporized had been cooked. The fringe of the blast washed over Arlo, singeing his hair and momentarily blinding him, but his limited telepathy told him where Afar stood.

“Now the battle has been joined,” Arlo said grimly. He kicked the dripping, gooey hulk of the Xest at his son at the same time as Morning Haze, mistaking his intent, charged toward him.

The two minionettes watched the bloody struggle with twin smiles of pure rapture.